TheGlobe-Trotters

TheGlobe-Trotters

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

To The Top of The World

Map picture

Cruise Segment One

Map picture

Cruise Segment Two

 

To The Top of The World

It seems as if Lisa and I have barely been home long enough to get our laundry done, but a new adventure is even now fast approaching.

At the end of this month, we will fly to Stockholm, Sweden to begin a month long odyssey that will eventually take us to the top of the world - at least as far as a cruise ship can go. Our journey actually has two different legs. After several days in Stockholm we will join the Crystal Symphony for two back to back cruises.

The first leg of our journey will be a tour of the Baltic Sea. Upon leaving Stockholm, the ship will spend three days at St. Petersburg, Russia, while Lisa and I will take the first two days and fly on a tour to Moscow, before returning to St. Petersburg. Our next stop will be a visit to Helsinki, Finland after which we have a day at sea to catch our breath. The next three days will be non-stop experiences when we visit Berlin, Kiel and Copenhagen in as many days. Copenhagen marks the end of the first cruise and so the ship will overnight in that port so that passengers can leave from the first cruise and others arrive for the next adventure. We have actually booked some very interesting tours for both days, and so as you can see this first cruise is not going to allow me much time to share our adventures, but I will do my best.

The second leg of our adventure is special in that the cruise line only makes this trip one time per year. We will depart Copenhagen and travel North along the Norwegian coast eventually crossing the Arctic Circle and entering the Norwegian Sea. Along the way we will stop at places with names like Geiranger, Hellesylt, Trondheim and Honningsvag. Honningsvag located at the very top of Norway. Our journey will continue North into the Barents Sea and we will enter an area that in winter is completely covered with Ice. The boundary occurs around Bear Island, but in summer it is possible to continue North. As far as I can tell from what information I have it appears that the ship will cruise as far North as Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island and from there continue until it encounters the Polar Ice Cap. Incredible as this seems to me, it appears that we will be around 80 degrees of North Latitude. By comparison when we traveled to Antarcticia the most southern latitude allowed to cruise ships was 65 degrees. So, we will be even farther North than we were South.